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When Yukio was three years old, he rescued a snake.
They were out… somewhere, in a park or on a hike or maybe just walking home, Yukio doesn't remember. Just that he was out ahead for once; Rin had stopped to look at something.
He found it sunning itself on the bike path; a little thing, no longer than his father's hand, and as oblivious to the cyclists rounding the corner as they were to it.
Yukio was too young then to have a firm grasp on death, but he knew how things broke, and that sometimes there was nothing anyone could do to put them back together.
He knew the snake would break. And he knew that even his father, who could fix practically anything, wouldn't be able to make it better.
Yukio had been seeing monsters since he was born. They pulled his hair and pinched his arms. They scratched on his window at night. The snake looked harmless by comparison; it didn't even have claws. In his hierarchy fears, seeing it crushed, snapped like a cheap toy, was far more terrible than the prospect of a bite or a bruise.
Everything else was happenstance: Father Fujimoto had let go of his hand. Rin was unusually far away. There was no one to stop him. There was no one to help him.
Yukio didn’t remember running out onto the path. It was like he woke up and found himself there, scrabbling on the ground. The grit scraped his fingertips as he scooped the snake up by the middle, its scales warm to the touch. He remembered how it felt in his hand, the way it curled around his fingers, like it trusted him. Then he was tripping the rest of the way across the pavement, angry shouts at his back, and tossed the little body into the grass.
“Yukio!” Father Fujimoto called, sharply enough to cut across the pounding of his heart. The man strode up to him, tugging Rin along by one hand. "What were you thinking?"
“Thnake baby,” Yukio said, pointing. “It wath gonna hurt.”
“Snake?” Rin twisted at the end of his own arm like a dog on a leash. “Where?”
Yukio pointed again, and for the next few minutes both boys hunted through the grass and leaves.
“He went home,” Yukio proclaimed eventually, and Rin whined and rolled in the dirt.
“Good,” Father Fujimoto said, “That’s where he belongs.” Then he glanced at the sky, the way he did sometimes, like it was going to tell him something. “Us, too.”
Yukio followed his gaze, but all he saw was the afternoon sun, a butterfly, a few bad-birds talking to themselves on the power lines.
“Daddy,” Rin said, because that’s what they called him then. “Pet. Please, pet.”
“Nuh-uh, no way.” Fujimoto reclaimed the boy's hand, leaning down to blow off the worst of the dirt, “No animals but the two of you!”
Rin giggled, "Daddy, 'm not an aminal!"
"Coulda fooled me." He grinned, and reached out to ruffle Yukio's hair. "It was a good job, kiddo."
Yukio beamed and grabbed at his father's hand, full up with pride.
The next time he saw the snake, it was in his dreams.
It sat on a big flat rock next to a koi pond in a garden that lived somewhere inside Yukio’s head, looking just like he remembered.
“Yuki-chan!” It called when he came near, and curled around his wrist like a brightly colored bracelet. It was ringed in black and gold and red.
“Hello,” Yukio petted its head, laughing when it wiggled beneath his fingers. Its scales were smooth and warm. He didn't think to wonder how it knew his name. Why wouldn't it? There were no secrets in the garden then.
“Let’th be friendth.” It said, in a lisp that mirrored Yukio’s own, and he didn't wonder about that, either.
He just said, “Okay,” charmed by the colors and the voice and the friendly reception, and rubbed his thumb back and forth across its scales.
And there it stayed, in his stories and dreams and heart, safe in a world of perpetual spring. It slept beneath its rock, swam in the pond, basked in the sun, and feasted on lazy day-dream grasshoppers.
He talked to it often when he was young, about the sun and the sky and the sweet smell of the grass. The koi fish, it claimed, were excellent neighbors - “Very polite!” - but it did not care for the toad who lived on the other side of the pond.
“He tried to eat me again,” It complained, “That’th the third time this week!”
“He’s like that with everyone,” Yukio told it. Like the fish, the toad had come with the garden, a fat mean thing with a huge wide mouth it used to laugh at people.
“And eat them,” the snake added, “that’th the part that gets to me.”
“Rin kicked him once,” Yukio said, smiling at the memory, and relayed one of last month's bedtime stories, “but it didn’t do any good. It just went home and called us names. Then Rin tried to crawl down its hole and got all muddy.”
The snake giggled into its coils, a hsth,hsth,hsth sound, “Rin is funny,” it said, "I like him," and Yukio smiled.
“Me, too.”
It never seemed to grow, but it always looped easily round his wrist, so it must have - matching him, day to day and year to year. He shared his triumphs with it, his failures and fears, his hopes for the future. And it listened, wrapped sweetly around his arm.
He spoke with it less as he got older, growing up and out of make-believe. But it was special to him. A living (dreaming?) reminder of his own bravery, his father's approval, the taste of self-respect. Is it any wonder then that he was reluctant to turn his back on it? Even knowing everything the son of an exorcist is bound to hear about serpents.
'Yuki-chan!" It sang excitedly, about a month after he had started training, "Where have you been? I have tho much to tell you!"
"School." Yukio said and if it wasn't quite the truth, it was at least truth adjacent- not a total lie. He lied to Rin all the time now, but here it still felt wrong.
"Thcool," the snake scoffed,"ith for fish. What do you want with that?"
"I like school," Yukio reminded it, "I like to learn."
"You can learn here! We can teach you all kindth of things!" It wriggled on its rock, coiling and uncoiling. Yukio was standing too far away for it to wrap around his wrist.
"I need to learn human things, though."
"Hmph, if you thay so. Anyway, gueth what? The kois have eggths! Ithn't that exthiting? I'm exthited! Maybe you can join their thcool. Then we could thee each other all the time!"
"No,'' Yukio said, still standing a careful-cautious two feet away, "I don't think so."
Less sleep meant less dreams, meant less garden, meant less snake. By the time he was ten, he could go months without seeing it.
"I'm to be an exorcist," he told it finally, because winter was half-over and the certification exam loomed large in his mind, "and then I'm going to destroy all the evil in the world."
"That thounds like a lot of work." The snake said, weaving figure eights on its rock, "You thould try hibernating instead, you'll feel better for it."
Yukio smiled, charmed the way he always was. When he woke, to snow and suspicion and overcast days, it would worry him. But here, in this moment, he enjoyed the serpent’s sweet simplicity. "I don't think that would work for me."
"Thuit yourself. Oh, hey! The toad tried to eat me again thith morning. He waited until I was thleeping! Can you believe that? He'th plenty evil, will you destroy him when you're an exorthist?" And it watched him with bright, guileless eyes.
"I –“ Yukio hesitated, uncertain, “I don't know.” He said, “I don't know yet."
—--
"Yuki-chan, did you hear? The kois eggth hatched! There are 120,238 boyth and 162,022 girls!"
—--
“Gueth what I tried, Yuki-chan? Slugs! I wath a little nervouth, because they looked gross, but they were really good!”
-----
"Happy birthday, Yuki-chan!"
—--
"You should take a break, Yuki-chan! You're always tho buthy, buthy, buthy. You never have time to play anymore."
—--
"Yuki-chan, did I ever thank you for thaving me?"
—-
"Yuki-chan," it whispered, the week after Father Fujimoto died, when Yukio finally collapsed, more unconscious than asleep. "Yuki-chan?"
And he walked right past it.
—--
Yukio came awake more slowly than usual. His head ached and his left eye burned and his lips felt cracked and dry.
Around him, the garden was quiet, patient. He could hear the babbling of the stream that fed the pond, and the whisper of a breeze through the grass, and the whistle of his own breath in his lungs.
He didn't remember falling asleep, but that wasn't so unusual. The concussion probably didn’t help matters.
He found the snake where it always was - sunning on a rock next to the pond. The same two koi tumbled and turned beneath the water's surface, no more, no less. Perhaps the babies had grown and moved on, perhaps they died, perhaps their parents ate them.
"You were right." He told it, with no preamble, "School never taught me the things I really needed to know. Or maybe I just couldn't learn them."
It was smaller than he remembered, less than the length of his hand. "Welcome home, Yuki-chan."
He hadn't expected everything to look the same, feel the same, even smell the same, like grass clippings and water and rich dark earth. He had feared the dreamscape would reflect the rot in his heart, be blasted and barren, or maybe just vacant, the way he felt inside.
Even the toad was there, sitting on the opposite bank, its wide mouth stretched into a leer. Yukio didn't understand why he felt so relieved to see it, it had always been an ugly nasty thing - a child's picture of a villain. It chuckled when it caught him looking, and stuck out its white fleshy tongue.
The snake was watching him, its eyes deep water. "Thometimes even the terrible is comforting," it said, "when you know it well."
"Snakes in gardens,” Yukio mused, “that means something. There's a story about that."
"We mithed you." The snake said. "You were gone tho long."
"In the bible…" Yukio said, slowly, carefully, feeling his way forward, "the snake–serpent- is the root of all suffering, the reason for the fall. Does that sound familiar to you?"
"I wouldn't know, Yuki-chan, I don't read."
"It’s why Adam and Eve had to leave Eden behind and be separated from God." He told it, and readied himself for it to ask who they are, if he’s ever met them, why they had to go, but it doesn’t.
Instead it coiled around itself on its rock, and said: "What did it do?"
"It…" Yukio shook his head. It hurt. He knew he was asleep, but he was still so tired. "It deceived them. It… It led them astray."
"How?"
It sounded so silly. He hated to say it out loud. "It told them the truth. That was its sin." Was it a sin? Could animals sin? Could demons?
The serpent gazed up at him, twisting its body into a tiny figure eight, into infinity. "I've never made anyone do something they didn’t want to do."
It’s a demon, Yukio told himself. It must be, unless it's something worse. But he can't bring himself to care. He closed the gap between them, and put out his hand. "I don’t know how to live. I don't know how to… everything is wrong.”
It wrapped around his wrist like it was meant to be there, a charming bracelet full of poison - because it was poisonous, he knew it was. “You don’t have to,” Its tongue flicked against his pulse - he couldn’t even feel it. “You just do it. Day by day, the betht you can. That'th what I do.”
“But you aren't real. You don’t have to be real.”
“Of courth I’m real. I’m as real as you are.”
That, maybe, Yukio could believe. “Are you a monster then? Are you trying to trick me? Did I doom myself when I… when I…"
"When you thaved me?"
“Are even…” His vision blurred. Great, crying again. “Are even…” Were even his good deeds all wrong?
"It's just a thtory, Yuki-chan."
…Different languages, different cultural reference points, translation after translation, marked by ignorance and bias… It had a point. Who could really say what it meant anymore?
On the other hand, that was exactly what the serpent would say.
…Because it was true.
Yukio's eyes burned. His head hurt. He was tired of everything.
"This isn’t right. I shouldn't… I shouldn't be talking to you. This can't be right. Normal. Okay.” Everyone knew there was something wrong with him. They just didn’t know what. Maybe it was this, the snake inside of him, his best friend, whispering comfort.
"Oh Yuki-chan,” It told him gently. “Everyone has a serpent in their heart. It's what makes you human."